The Rourke Chronicles

The continuation of Paul Rubenstein’s account of his early adventures with John Rourke after the Night of the War. So Paul, John and Natalia have reunited with Natalia bringing a message for John from her uncle. Unfortunately they get sidetracked after Captain Cole wounds Natalia. They find themselves on a nuclear submarine headed to the new west coast. There they are to find six ICBMs that survived the war. Only the new west coast is swarming with a crazy religious cult. Also Cole is not on a mission from U.S. II but has his own agenda. He is a white supremacist who plans to use the missiles to destroy Chicago and thus the Soviet occupation. Luckily Rourke and friends foil this mission.

Then Rourke finds his family but has a more serious problem. The Earth is doomed with the ionization of the atmosphere. Soon it will burst into flames and end all life. But General Ismael Varakov gives Rourke a way to save his family. Colonel Rozzdestvesnskiy of the KGB is building the Womb. At the former site of Norad he plans to go into suspended animation and emerge five centuries later to rule the world. He will shoot down the Eden Project a plan by the western democracies to repopulate the Earth with select people put into suspended animation and send out on a long orbit of the solar system. Rourke, Natalia and a combined Soviet Spetsnaz unit and U.S. unit manage to destroy the Womb and Rourke and his family go into suspended animation as the Earth bursts into flames.

The second volume of the Rourke Chronicles is once again a rehash of Survivalist books this time #6-9. This time they had to include some other method of telling the story since Rubenstein wasn’t involved in #8-9. So the authors resort to mostly interviews with Rourke and some salvaged records by archeologists. Mostly notes from U.S. II, Rozdestvesnskiy’s dairy and General Valkov’s notes. Some of these were interesting but for the most part nothing really new was explored in the book. Just like the last one it was mostly a rehash of the original books and didn’t have much new. I recommend to get the original books and just forego this series.

Throughout John Rourke’s adventures since the Night of the War he has had one man he could count on. Paul Rubenstein a nerdy assistant publisher from New York was on the airliner that Rourke was on when the war started. He was the only one that stuck with him when he went for help for the survivors on the plane. Rubenstein knew that to survive he would have to stick with John Rourke. He had a willingness to learn and learned how to shoot and ride a motorcycle. Eventually a strong bond of friendship formed were the two were like brothers. Eventually he became a son-in-law by marrying his daughter and cemented his place in the Rourke family. This book is the story told in Paul’s own words of the events chronicles in the first five books.

The first spin off series of the Survivalist. I really wanted to like this book. I thought it would chronicle the untold story of Paul Rubenstein. Instead all it did was rehash the first five books. Nothing new to read and seemed a pointless endeavor. I hope that if there is a second book in this series it has something more original.